Producers on the hit HBO series, Game of Thrones, have been struggling to find locations within the UK for filming where winter is merely ‘coming’. The saying used by many of the show’s characters, ‘Winter is Coming’, references the impending winter that the fictitious land of Westeros will succumb to, and will be under for decades.
However, as many of the fictional castles and villages seen in Westeros are filmed in the UK, the film’s producers have found that winter has already arrived, and has been here for some time.
It also looks set to remain for several decades, just as foretold in the TV series and books.
To combat this, the show’s writers have had to hastily rewrite scripts for the next series, changing lines such as ‘winter is coming’ to ‘bloody hell, winter’s here, it’s freezing’.
Creator of Game of Thrones, George RR Martin, commented:
The bastard weather is ruining my story. Winter’s not supposed to arrive until the last series, but it’s already here and shows no sign of pissing off. I knew we should have filmed this somewhere else.
He went on to add how, in shooting a recent scene, actor Kit Harington (who plays Jon Snow) was stood in three feet of snow in mid Wales while uttering the line ‘winter is coming’. Kit apparently became enraged at saying the line in such circumstances, and stormed off set shouting ‘this is taking the f*cking piss’.
The scripts rewrites are not expected to delay the next series.